THEY SAY A MAN IS KNOWN by his enemies. But a politician's allies can be equally revealing.

Those who have risen in resolute defense of Bill Clinton are as much a commentary on his character as the footnotes in Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr's report.

Among his most ardent supporters on the House Judiciary Committee are Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

"We're not fair-weather friends; we will be with you to the end," Waters promised the president at a fund-raiser for Democratic candidates. Starr's report is "nothing but hearsay," Waters harrumphs.

Waters

The lady has a reputation for standing by her friends. In 1992, this congresswoman from South Central Los Angeles went to the wall for the rioters who demolished her district after the acquittals in the first Rodney King trial. "No justice, no peace," Waters shouted at a Washington rally.

When criticized for refusing to condemn the rioters, Waters responded that calling these criminals -- including the trio who pulled Reginald Denny from his truck and almost beat him to death -- "hoodlums and thugs" only "makes them madder." By the same rationale, Winston Churchill should have refrained from denouncing the German civil disturbances known as Kristallnacht.

If Waters is willing to condone arson, robbery and assault, what's a little perjury and obstruction of justice?

Barney Frank, the committee's second-ranking Democrat, is one of Clinton's most voluble, if at times barely intelligible, defenders. Frank is no stranger to sexual scandal. In 1990, it was disclosed that the congressman had been living with a male prostitute he met through a personals ad.

Like his leader, Frank also had a problem with veracity. Among other services rendered to Steve Gobie, the congressman wrote a letter to the hustler's parole officer that, he later admitted, contained "misleading statements." Frank is sensitive to sexual witch hunts, especially those that uncover embarrassing facts.

The president has many media apologists, but none is quite like Geraldo Rivera, who has graduated from his days as a trash TV host -- "Geraldo" covered such timely topics as "What happens when the man you marry becomes a woman?" -- to "Rivera Live" on CNBC, where he's been reincarnated as a cross between a toad and a Doberman.

Rivera interviewed Rep. Paul McHale (D-Pa.) shortly after McHale became the first Democratic congressman to call for Clinton's resignation. Based on information supplied by his controllers in the White House, Rivera accused McHale of lying about his military record.

The charge, which was false, is doubly damning, as it was leveled at a decorated Marine Corps veteran of the Gulf War on behalf of a draft dodger.

Like Frank, Geraldo has "been there, done that."

In his autobiography, "Exposing Myself," Rivera boasted, "I've had thousands of women, literally thousands." Also, shades of Clinton's personnel policy: "It was common for women working for me in those days to wind up in my bed. It was like a part of the job description."

It must be comforting for the president to know that a man of Geraldo's integrity and high professional standards is in his corner. You might say that what Clinton is to the presidency, Geraldo is to journalism.

Even more than Washington and New York, Hollywood is Clinton's kind of town.

In Paris, an ad-hoc coalition of beautiful people -- including Vanessa Redgrave (friend of the Palestine Liberation Organization), Anthony Hopkins and Lauren Bacall -- signed a petition condemning Starr as a "fanatical prosecutor with unlimited power" who has violated the "sacred right" to privacy. Privacy negates perjury.

Says Marshall Herskovitz, executive producer of "thirtysomething," "Those people whose sexual morality accepts the possibility of complexity and ambivalence in a marital relationship have not judged Clinton as badly as those who see marriage as a monolithic simple entity."

Beverly Hills is the post office address of sexual non-judgmentalism, which is why the average Hollywood marriage lasts as long as the average campaign promise.

An entertainment industry that has done so much to sexualize and coarsen our culture rides to the rescue of a man who has demonstrated how much he shares its values, with the complexity and ambivalence of his own relationships.

"The scandal is really a referendum on sexual morality in this country," Herskovitz declares. He ain't just a-whistlin' "Dixie."

Clinton and his defenders are a perfect match -- hollow heads and empty souls. They are worthy of each other.

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